Piercing Thicker plate .75"-1"

[CHICO_METAL]

Hey so I have been struggling with piercing thicker plate my job as the operator here at chico metal is making all of the structural Base plates and connection plates for our columns and beams. we have a 5X10 Koike ShopPro with Hypertherm Powermax 105 Torch, and Oxy Acetylene Torch. with shop air. Operating on FLashCut Koike 8
I have been using the oxy acetylene to go through and do the initial pierces on 1" plate sometimes .75" manually operating it. then running the program and each hole will be doing an edge start and I get nice clean cuts without ruining my consumables. but that takes a lot of time and for a job like this

there are a lot of holes that need to be burned out as you can see, and without a brand-new electrode it seems to have trouble doing the pierce successfully without burning through tips and sometimes the shield gets damaged.
here are the settings I'm using with the plasma 105

so, I'm wondering if anyone has any advice as to streamline this process and make things easier for me while maintaining good cut quality with the holes. so far, I've tackled the ones without any red outlines

and as you can see, I haven't even nested the connection plates with a bunch of holes. oh, btw all the holes are .8125" Diameter typically 3" OC besides a couple plates with larger 1.25" holes
and any tips for running the oxy acetylene would be great too it seems to be so finnicky working one day great then using the same settings not at all the next Haha. Oh, I also use triangular loops so as I can connect the lead in with each part so as to continue with an edge start for each part here is an example of such

Anyways if there is something I haven't included or please let me know!! Hope everyone is having good pre-holiday stress Haha ughh!!

Matt

[SegoMan DeSigns]

I have a HYP 105 on the 6x12 BBM (Built By Me) I delayed the pierce time to 2.25 seconds and use the "Normal" option for lead in on 1" plate with good results. Try this and adjust as needed for your application / machine. I have the lead in set at center of holes less than 1" in diameter. The only thing I have noticed with this is it leaves a little dross on top of the plate which I scrape off after the torch moves away from the pierce point. Future plans include mounting an air drill and scribe to the machine for the smaller holes and parts marking.

IMG_20201103_120958525_HDR.jpg (47.17 KiB) Viewed 1304 times

IMG_20201103_120958525_HDR.jpg (47.17 KiB) Viewed 1304 times

[mdwalker]

I have a powermax 1000 and occasionally cut up to 5/8" plate. When I have holes in thicker material I move to the pierce point, pierce the hole, then immediately stop and raise the torch before it starts the cut. I clean the slag away from the pierce then continue the cut.

[djreiswig]

I cut 3/4" & 1" with my 65, but I usually try and edge start. On 1/2" I use a ramp pierce. I've had limited success piercing 3/4", but I usually just foul the nozzle.

[weldguy]

I found a trick that helps on thick plate pierces and helps prevent slag on the nozzle and prematurely damaged consumables.

I set the lead in to be as long as possible with a high pierce height (within reason of course) and use a very short or no pierce delay so the torch XY motion begins before the material has been pierced.

As the torch travels along the lead in it will cut deeper and deeper until it has made it through the plate and the slag blows out behind while doing this. The trick is to have the lead in long enough that by the time the torch gets to the actual cut profile it has pierced through the plate and will continue on.

Leave the THC off for this trick and on .75" or 1" it really should not be needed anyway. I find this is easier on consumables and works very well.

[SegoMan DeSigns]

I found a trick that helps on thick plate pierces and helps prevent slag on the nozzle and prematurely damaged consumables.

I set the lead in to be as long as possible with a high pierce height (within reason of course) and use a very short or no pierce delay so the torch XY motion begins before the material has been pierced.

As the torch travels along the lead in it will cut deeper and deeper until it has made it through the plate and the slag blows out behind while doing this. The trick is to have the lead in long enough that by the time the torch gets to the actual cut profile it has pierced through the plate and will continue on.

Leave the THC off for this trick and on .75" or 1" it really should not be needed anyway. I find this is easier on consumables and works very well.

I will give this a try, thanks for the tip

[adbuch]

I found a trick that helps on thick plate pierces and helps prevent slag on the nozzle and prematurely damaged consumables.

I set the lead in to be as long as possible with a high pierce height (within reason of course) and use a very short or no pierce delay so the torch XY motion begins before the material has been pierced.

As the torch travels along the lead in it will cut deeper and deeper until it has made it through the plate and the slag blows out behind while doing this. The trick is to have the lead in long enough that by the time the torch gets to the actual cut profile it has pierced through the plate and will continue on.

Leave the THC off for this trick and on .75" or 1" it really should not be needed anyway. I find this is easier on consumables and works very well.

[CHICO_METAL]

I have a HYP 105 on the 6x12 BBM (Built By Me) I delayed the pierce time to 2.25 seconds and use the "Normal" option for lead in on 1" plate with good results. Try this and adjust as needed for your application / machine. I have the lead in set at center of holes less than 1" in diameter. The only thing I have noticed with this is it leaves a little dross on top of the plate which I scrape off after the torch moves away from the pierce point. Future plans include mounting an air drill and scribe to the machine for the smaller holes and parts marking.

IMG_20201103_114459705_HDR.jpg

IMG_20201103_120958525_HDR.jpg

Thanks SegoMan, so you don't burn through consumables when doing this are you using shop air as well? yea those turned out nice. I will try that today on drop plate. yesterday a had to burn out these massive base plates from 1" a572 so i went through with the oxy acetylene attachment and manually pierced about .25" away from the lead in pierce so as to get an edge start it works really well but takes an extra 20-30 min to do so. I will include pictures in an hour or two. I like your layout of your slats I have been thinking about doing a similar design. because I have noticed that if using the standard cut speed for most all plate thicknesses when its cutting along the y axis and comes across a slat it will begin to rooster tail unless you have slowed down the cut speed prior to starting the cut. So, I made a habit of just slowing the IPM by 5-20 for thick-thin and that doesn't happen. my table has curved slats, so it won't stay on that path for long, but I've been wanting to try and design like yours. I liked weldguy idea for making a long lead in with no pierce delay so as the rooster tail stays off the consumables and shooting off to the side, my only question is how long of a lead in is required before it actually pierces all the way through? or how small of a hole can you achieve doing this trick without compromising hole quality.

Also do you guys use small hole processing I have noticed that using the standard 15% cut speed for that option doesn't seem to produce very good results and that using about 50% on thinner material too 80% on thicker produces better cleaner cuts without the low-speed dross that does not want to come so easy.
I'm still very new to this with only about 6months experience on the table good thing is I am using it full time, so I get a lot of practice. but any tips or suggestions are always welcome to produce excellent hole quality. because that's something that seems to vary a lot with many variables that contribute to it. Haha

[CHICO_METAL]

I have a powermax 1000 and occasionally cut up to 5/8" plate. When I have holes in thicker material I move to the pierce point, pierce the hole, then immediately stop and raise the torch before it starts the cut. I clean the slag away from the pierce then continue the cut.

yea that is basically what I'm doing with the oxy acetylene attachment and doesn't damage any consumables. do you use a new electrode and tip when starting to do thicker pierces like this?

[CHICO_METAL]

I found a trick that helps on thick plate pierces and helps prevent slag on the nozzle and prematurely damaged consumables.

I set the lead in to be as long as possible with a high pierce height (within reason of course) and use a very short or no pierce delay so the torch XY motion begins before the material has been pierced.

As the torch travels along the lead in it will cut deeper and deeper until it has made it through the plate and the slag blows out behind while doing this. The trick is to have the lead in long enough that by the time the torch gets to the actual cut profile it has pierced through the plate and will continue on.

Leave the THC off for this trick and on .75" or 1" it really should not be needed anyway. I find this is easier on consumables and works very well.

I want to try this idea I read this somewhere recently and have wanted to try it. so how small of holes can you achieve using this on say .75" and 1" ?

[mdwalker]

I have a powermax 1000 and occasionally cut up to 5/8" plate. When I have holes in thicker material I move to the pierce point, pierce the hole, then immediately stop and raise the torch before it starts the cut. I clean the slag away from the pierce then continue the cut.

yea that is basically what I'm doing with the oxy acetylene attachment and doesn't damage any consumables. do you use a new electrode and tip when starting to do thicker pierces like this?

Not necessarily new but at least good condition. I usually try to stay 3/8" material and below so I don't do a lot of the heavier materials. I found that the nozzle was being damaged from dragging through the slag after the pierce so stopping the movement after the pierce and cleaning the slag worked for me. The long lead in described in a post above this sounds like it would work too.